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Best Wine Storage Practices

So you have learnt a lot about health benefits of wine and want to try it out. Great! So, you are into the process of purchasing the best wine that’s available around. You have made an expensive investment and are happy to bring home the treasure.

Now that you have brought your favorite wine home, you need to know about how to store it properly to make sure that you do not ruin it. Storage of wine is an important topic and one requires to know a lot about it in order to keep the wine in good and drinking conditions.

Are you aware that the major factors affecting storage of wine are present in the environment? Yes, it is true. You need to know about how you can actually store wine to retain its original quality and taste that made you fall for it at the first place.

Here are some of the factors you need to consider in order to store your wine in a perfect manner. Understand the factors given below and follow the instructions so that you don’t end up wasting your hard earned money.

a) Proper hygiene of the facility:

This is a vital factor that affects wine storage. It is very important to maintain the cleanliness of the place where the wine is stored. Never store wine in a poor ventilated place or a place full of grime or dirt. Poor ventilation transforms the taste of the wine and the dirt will spoil the label on the bottle. Thereby, affecting the overall resale value of the wine.

b) Lighting:

Light is known to have a great impact on the properties of wine. It can promote premature aging of wine. If wine is stored at a place where there is an excess of light, it may ‘turn’ the wine.

c) Angle of the bottle:

Always store wine in a horizontal position, not in an upright position. The wine comes into contact with the cork, and it will not allow the cork to dry out. If you don’t store the wine bottle at a horizontal angle, the cork will dry up. This facilitates the air to come in contact with the wine earlier than it actually should and ruin it, due to oxidation.

d) Vibration:

You should always store wine in a vibration free environment.

e) Humidity:

About 70 percent of humidity at a facility is acceptable for storing wine. Higher levels of humidity will destroy the label and lower amounts of humidity will sped up the process of oxidation and end up ruining the wine.

f) Temperature:

The optimum temperature to be maintained at a wine storage facility is between fifty and forty five degrees Fahrenheit. Lower temperatures than this will delay the natural aging process and higher temperatures will speed up this process.

You should work towards maintaining a healthy balance between all the above mentioned factors. This will help in proper storage of wine. The taste will be maintained. Wine storage is an art and you need to learn it before you actually practice it.